328 PLOCEPASSER MELANORHYNCHUS 



bj the old and joung birds, as a roosting place. These nests 

 are annually repaired and last for many years. The eggs are 

 white, suffiised with pink, thickly marked, especially at the 

 broad end, with blotches and streaks of deep brown pink. 

 They average 1-00 x 0-72." My late friend, T. E. Buckley, 

 while in Matabeleland, made the following note : " Most of the 

 nests have a hole right through, and seem only to be used for 

 roosting in, as there is no place for eggs ; it is the older- 

 looking nests that contain the eggs, which are pink, speckled 

 with brown ; these nests have only one entrance. The male 

 has a short sweet song." 



Major Clark also remai-ks that the call-notes and babbling 

 of a flock of these birds are very pretty, and were constantly 

 heard by him in the thorn scrub on the Bloemfontein side of 

 the Modder River. 



Plocepasser melanorhynchus. 



Plocepasser melanorhyuchus, EUpp. Syst. Uebers, p. 78 (1845) Shoa ; 

 Sharpe, Cat. B. M. xiii. p. 246 (1890) ; Shelley, B. Afr. I. No. 469 

 (1896); Grant, Ibis, 1904, p. 257 Tadejemulka, Serba ; Eeicheu. 

 Vog. Afr. iii. p. 12 (1904). 



Adult male. Forehead, crown, nape and front of face black, shading 

 into brown on the ear-coverts and neck ; a broad white eyebrow, separating 

 the eye and ear-coverts from the crown ; back and sides of neck, mantle and 

 lesser wing-coverts earthy brown ; lower back and upper tail-coverts white ; 

 wings brown above and below ; a few white feathers at the bend of the 

 wing ; median coverts white ; greater coverts with white ends, broadest on 

 the inner feathers ; quill with buff edges broadest on the inner secondaries ; 

 tail dark brown, with broadish tarminal pale margins ; under parts uniform 

 white, with the flanks brown ; a black band margins the sides of the throat. 

 "Iris brown; bill black; legs brown" (Pease). Total length 7'0 inches, 

 culmenO-65, wing 4-0, tail 2-8, tarsus 0-9. J , 14, 2. 80. Lado (Emiu). 



Adult female. Similar in plumage to the male. Wing 3-8. 2 , 18. 3. 01. 

 Daira Aila (Pease). 



The Black-billed Sparrow-Weaver inhabits Eastern Africa 

 between 2" S. lat. and 11° N. lat., ranging westward to the 

 Nile. 



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